A physical model for high resolution radar sea clutter

Abstract

Sea clutter intensity for high-resolution imaging radars is known to deviate from the classical exponential probability distribution which is observed at low resolution. We use a physical description of sea clutter based on the Two-Scale Model to obtain a relevant expression of the clutter distribution at high-resolution. We test this model with a set of airborne SAR data and show that it provides excellent fits of the intensity distribution in the two polarizations with only one parameter, which is interpreted as a surface mean square slope and is sea state dependent.